Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden

This saw an incredible panel of fashion favourites discuss some of the most important topics facing new and established fashion houses. But first up let me tell you some exciting news!

Due to the success and popularity of the Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden design competition (judged by Donatella Versace), they have decided to create a Fringe competition for accessory designers too! This will be judged by Tamara Mellon and is a great platform for any shoe/bag designer. For more information please visit the Fashion Fringe website. www.fashionfringe.com

 

 

 

Now, on with proceedings, chaired by Colin McDowell, the panel, Dolly Jones, Lorraine Candy, Averyl Oates, Claudia Croft and Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou had at times opposing views, but all shared brilliant insights. To make it easier, I have divided up the evening by the questions that were posed.

1. Is it a good idea that people can leave university and start up their label straight away?

Sophia (editor of 10/10+) felt that it was essentially the best time to start up. She was all for ‘throwing people in the deep end' and that new designers are often fearless' which is what makes them so great.

Elle editor, Lorraine Candy on the other hand, felt that designers should be aware that they need to ‘surround themselves with people who can advise and help you at an early stage'.

This was possibly the best advice, yes it is great that you have energy when you graduate, but the fashion world is notoriously unforgiving, you only get one shot and it's worth doing right.

Averyl Oates, buying director at Harvey Nichols, was quick to praise LFW, calling it ‘amazing' as ‘young designers threw caution to the wind' and it was these small players that ‘lifted a heavy season', dogged down overly commercial collections. I have to admit I agree. There was a real mix this LFW and all the panel agreed it was, ‘the best LFW ever'. Economic crisis often brings out creativity and innovation and with young designers having nothing to lose, they created exciting collections that gave a fabulous twist to the safe silhouettes that littered the fashion world elsewhere.

Dolly Jones was quick to point out that ‘quality must be paired with creativity', and that she has found that more and more of our young designers are ‘acting like business people, aware that the buyer is looking'; this is a killer combination.

2. The way women shop has changed since the ‘Credit Crunch' discuss…

We have all heard of nothing but recently, here the panel set out some survival guide tips.

Sophia wanted to remind designers that ‘identifying your DNA' is important. This means working out who you are as a designer; what is the key to your designs and your brand? Young designers like Alexander Wang are so well respected because you know that although the shapes and quality will always be kooky, his brand ID is so recognisable.

Colin reiterated this by pointing out, that new designers have a tendency to chop and change with each season, as they want to try everything. This is a huge no, no. Handwriting takes time to develop and make an impact, if you keep the strand of DNA running and a core value, people will eventually be able to recognise it, it takes at least 3-5 seasons.

3. Should the British journalism industry be more supportive of new designers?

Lorraine felt that the British media were far more supportive of home grown talent than our foreign media counterparts. However, Claudia of the Sunday Times Style, interjected that there ‘has to be a good story and it has to look good', in order for the media to cover it. There isn't an automatic right. Personally I feel that there is a lot of media support for young designers. Though there could be more. The problem as usual is money and it's an unsolvable problem. Advertising revenue is what keeps our magazines alive, so naturally those products need to feature. There are fashion ‘indies' that cater to promoting newer designers, who don't have the money to buy their press. Personally as a stylist and trained designer, I love to try and feature at list one new or unknown designer in each shoot.

4. How many pieces to buyers expect a new designer to have for them to choose from?

The conversation quickly moved round to Averyl Oates and whether she bought into new designers and what it took to get into such a store of Harvey Nichols. She was pleased to announce that Spring 2010 will see Harvey Nichols giving over space on the 4th floor to emerging designers, around 80% of which will be home grown talent! With that aside, Averyl discussed how Giles has perfected deliveries, quality and range of wearable designs, diluted from his catwalk extravaganza. This has in turn seen his business grow by 30%. It's all good for Giles then, but what about the rest of us?

Well, don't expect to get the big orders in for up to 3-5 seasons. This is because it will take this amount of time for your DNA to be established and the buyers need to see that you can survive. No one wants to buy in for just one season, there needs to be room for development, year on year. It will also ensure that you have developed your quality and supply chain. In order to buy into your range, a buyer would like to get 12-15 pieces, a full story. This means that you should be looking at producing a collection of around 30 pieces, to allow for selection. We all know that one of London's biggest problems is lack of finance and once again this comes into play here; around 70%-80% of a budget is used up on pre-collections, with the rest saved for the shows. This means that is often already spent and you really need to impress to get the buyers to part with their cash. Get you price to product ratio right, most designers will not even break even for a many years, some still don't.

5. How to fund fashion shows? Is the catwalk show dead?

I was pleased that the panel agreed that showing a collection via a video, or installation, is quite frankly a bit rubbish; as Sophia said, you wouldn't have ‘virtual food'. The truth is buyers still want to see your clothes, there is also no replacement for the pictures from the catwalk that can go live o the web almost instantly. The best advice was to head to unusual industries to look for sponsorship. William Tempest worked with Sony, Tempest (who was in the audience) told everyone to ‘let your passion shine through, be passionate and you will attract'. I get his point, but he pretty much said that things, ‘just happened' for him; which is always not really what any struggling designer wants to hear. But don't be scared to ask, go out and look for sponsorship.

It is on that note that I leave you to ponder these juicy pieces of insider information!

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